


Tell Me What You Want

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Anal Sex, Bloodplay, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-25
Updated: 2010-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:35:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santino reflects upon his history during an interlude with a mortal lover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me What You Want

**Author's Note:**

> There is not much written about the Vampire Santino, so I thought I would try my hand at fleshing him out a little more and reflecting on his history.

****

## Tell Me What You Want

****

### Narrative

 

William gasped into the pillow, his fingers digging into the sheets. Pain and pleasure had so mingled in his mind that he no longer cared to discern one from the other. Santino drove into him; long, smooth strokes and had there ever been anything so deliciously hard? He'd told Santino once it was like being fucked by a pliant marble statue, like riding smooth alabaster.

At this moment, however, William was quite beyond words. He moved back against the vampire, voicing pleading whimpers. He loved this; he hated it, hated Santino for flaying him so cleanly and plucking out his will. Loved him for the excruciating pleasure, loved him for the dark thrill of fangs sunk into his fragile, human flesh.

William did not know that Santino was using very little of his monstrous strength. William believed he had courted Death and somehow won His love.

"So warm, my William. So very soft, your skin." Santino whispered, entering deeply one last time. He shuddered with his orgasm, pulled from him by the beauty of this mortal; his stretched and elastic muscles, his fragile, delicate bones. He pulled out and away gently and turned William over so that he could look into his eyes. Santino looked as though he'd finished a mildly stimulating conversation rather than having spent himself in his lovers' willing body, for his dark, fathomless eyes were calm and serious.

Santino stretched his body alongside William's, admiring they way they looked together. He let his hand glide lightly over William's flank, eyes coming to rest on the mortal's straining, rigid cock. He could feel William's discomfort.

"Will it be one small touch? Rosy, sweet cock, ripe to bursting." Santino touched his finger to the clear fluid leaking from the slit. William's hips bucked in reaction. "Your skin is reddened with your blood, _caro mio_." William's eyes were wide, the pupils dilated; he was indeed poised on the brink of screaming orgasm, breathless with tension. Fear and desire scented the air most pleasantly. "One touch? Or will I draw this out yet further, sweet boy?" Santino kissed William's mouth tenderly.

He knew what William wanted. He always knew, for William's mind was not murky with muddied intentions or indecisive worries. William had long been used to getting what he wanted. There was fear in him, because he was an intelligent man, but there was no longer enough fear. Awe had been replaced by complacency except, of course, when Santino deigned to drink from him.

To have the vampire clamped to his throat was dark ecstasy. It transcended for him all manner of exotic sex, paled to insignificance the most intense high from any chemical substance. William stared at Santino with mute appeal. He had tried once to taste Santino, teeth tearing uselessly but never breaching the white flesh. He wanted to taste the blood of the vampire or at least to draw something from Santino other than his amused satisfaction.

"You will not take what has not been offered to you, William." Santino had said, highly delighted by the mortal's fierceness. It was what William craved above all.

Most of the time.

Santino had become fascinated by how immediate the desires of mortals were, how completely most of them lived moment by moment. For instance, his William. William wanted several things from Santino, some predictable, others a bit more nebulous. What he wanted at this particular moment, however, was release.

His short, panting breaths pleased Santino inordinately; his obedience more so, because he saw it for what it really was; a means to an end. William's pleasure was the end, Santino's power over him the means to that end.

At this moment.

Santino slid his hand between Williams' quivering thighs, cupping the silky purse of his scrotum.

"Drawn out, then." he murmured to William. How beautifully the sweat gleamed upon William's golden skin. How perfectly enmeshed were the living cells of his mortal body. Santino thought sometimes that he could see the minute, myriad action of these cells, these molecules, for to his eyes all living things seemed to have motion and impossible, absorbing color.

Santino was a sensualist.

At one time he had been a priest and then he'd been turned from the relative darkness of one world to the complete darkness of another. It had turned him quite mad for a long while, and he'd never given the appreciation to his new existence that he should have, though he'd lived absorbed then…just in other ways.

He had been pulled from his mortal life as a devout, pious man and his subsequent confusion and fear had clouded his thinking for over a century, one madness overtaking another until he hadn't been certain what the truth was any longer. When the Roman coven had been at its height, he'd learned sensuality. He'd learned the sumptuous delight of his enhanced senses and it had been liberating indeed.

There were those, like Lestat, who lost no time at all in realizing the potentials of the Gift with its dazzling promise and its deep despair. Perhaps all vampires were at first the products of the age in which they were born.

William hissed when the pressure of Santino's massaging fingers became too intense and the vampire relaxed his hand. "A prick of the fangs, love?" Santino asked, leaning to run his tongue across William's flat stomach. "Or will I engulf you?"

William blinked, startled at being given a choice. Santino smiled. "I know what you are thinking, _caro_, but I should like to hear you voice it for me."

William hesitated, torn between twin lusts. Blood taken? Or that mouth, that dangerous, lush mouth on his throbbing cock. "Blow me." he rasped. Santino smiled again, this time at the crudity. He swallowed William whole.

William cried out and the notes that Santino heard in his voice were bliss and agony with a counterpoint of a deep, aching need. These sounds fed Santino as much as blood or anything else did these days.

 

~~~~~

 

William watched Santino with reproachful, adoring eyes, his body still twitching with the force of the orgasm that had been drawn from him. "Why are you going out to get what I would give you willingly?" William closed his eyes, realizing his words echoed those of someone else, gone now from his life.

"I most certainly would take more than you can comfortably give me,_ caro_." Santino said gently. "And you made your choice for this evening, did you not? It was your heat that piqued my thirst." He laughed lightly and William felt the familiar surge of heat even though his body was not yet ready to respond.

"Bastard." William got to his feet and began dressing. He moved with tight, furious jabs and inadvertently tore his shirt when he thrust his arm into the sleeve, Santino watched him, amused.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" William growled. "Go satisfy yourself, you prick."

When he looked up again Santino was gone, but the amused laughter still echoed in his head. He kicked viciously at the torn shirt and unsatisfied with that, contemplated trashing the place. He'd done such things before, god knew, but the heat of his anger was already cooling.

 

  
****

### Santino

****  


 

There are not many that know me well and that is as I prefer it. I have limited contact with others of our so-called coven for various reasons. Some of the reasons go back centuries, as with Marius and myself, but on the whole I keep to myself because I have little interest in what the others are doing. My recent interaction with Louis and Lestat and their little circle of mortal acquaintances and friends had been very pleasant and I have been thinking I should like to see them again at some point. But I digress.

Having left my dear William in another of his charming and petulant rages, I went outside and took the vehicle we'd used to come to this place. It would certainly enrage him further, since the place we were currently occupying was miles from any sort of civilization. William enjoyed it for the first week or so, but he was beginning to chafe at the isolation.

When we'd left New Orleans in December, I decided I would like to drive rather than fly back to my residence in Los Angeles. William had been rather fawning the first few days out of New Orleans, thinking that I might exact some sort of payment for his actions toward Lestat, but by the time we reached this place in the mountains of Colorado, he'd convinced himself that nothing would come of it.

Mortals have such a short span of attention.

I drove the vehicle to one of the ski resorts that were so popular; a place lit up for night skiing and lost myself for a while in the press of people in the _après_ ski lounge, deciding upon a victim. I found him easily, a handsome and powerful lawyer who evinced an interest in me. Like my William, he seemed to feel assured that everything that he wanted was his for the taking. For whatever reason, I am attracted to this brand of arrogance and self-assurance which I notice often emanates from the rarified social elite. It's something that has come about in this modern age. In my earlier days I was much more caught up in the whole good vs. evil question. I move in slightly different circles now.

After speaking with him for a while, I began to change my mind about taking him in the parking lot. I had a thought that perhaps this fine lawyer would enjoy returning to the chalet with me, and that I might let him enjoy William. There was no question whether William would protest the sexual athletics; he was amenable to such scenarios and indeed, he often instigated them. This human had a fair chance of surviving the night if he proved entertaining enough and if I grew bored, perhaps it was time William was introduced to the reality of the creature he had enslaved himself to.

****

### Narrative

William poured three more fingers of scotch and stared morosely at the snow falling past the light outside the wide window. Beyond the circle of light the world was black.; there were no lights to be seen in this remote location. He flicked the switch and the lights outside the window vanished and all he could see in the glass was his own reflection. He was still shirtless, wearing only the jeans he'd angrily pulled on when Santino was still there.

There was a chance, William knew, that Santino would not return that night. William was never sure how Santino would react to him at any given time and he worried now that he'd driven the vampire away. Not by his anger; God knew Santino seemed to be tremendously amused by it. No, he thought it had more to do with when he'd asked why Santino he would go elsewhere to slake his thirst.

It was not so difficult to see that Santino had plucked the images from his brain. William shared Santino's bed and his body and he even thought sometimes that Santino bore some love for him, or at least some affection. He discounted the lovers' words whispered when they joined, for even a contained creature such as Santino was might lose his amused façade in the throes of physical release. What Santino had seen even as the words tumbled from William's mouth was that William wanted more.

_'Why are you going out to get what I would give you willingly?'_

William winced. He should have kept the words in his mouth, locked behind his teeth, because when he did that it seemed Santino spent less time looking over what was going on behind the words. William was under no illusions that Santino could know what he was thinking--or some of it, at any rate--whenever he wanted to. He had come to understand, though, that the vampire did not make a practice of using this particular talent.

The cell phone trilled and William opened the line, annoyed at the immediate acceleration of his heart.

"Are you quite recovered, _caro mio_?

 

The caressing note in Santino's voice was at once soothing and arousing. "I don't know what you mean." William said, shortly. "Are you coming back?"

The vampire's low chuckle raised the hair in William's arms. "Of course I am. And I am bringing a guest."

William frowned, gazing at his reflection in the mirrored hallway. There were dark bruises, finger marks, just below the ribs on the left side of his body. He pressed his fingertips into the marks and the dull pain made him focus. A test? Maybe.

"A guest?"

"A very handsome gentleman. I am waiting for him to rejoin me. He is taking leave of some friends, I believe. I should like it very much indeed, William, if you would show a good face to him. I think your grey cashmere slacks and a black silk shirt would suit."

"Of course." His agreement was automatic. He did not tend to balk at Santino's tone of authority; he was usually comfortable in his submissive role. "Will he be spending the rest of the night?" William's voice was surprisingly steady, considering the sudden increase in speculation that threatened to short circuit his thinking.

"It would only be right, I think. The chalet is a good distance from this place. Relax, _caro_. I do this for you as well as for myself. A little spice to our interlude in the mountains. Ah. Here he comes, darling. We shall be there in three quarters of an hour, I should think."

"I look forward to it." William said and the words sounded lame even to his own ears.

"I'm pleased to know that. _Te amo_, my William."

The connection was broken and William placed the phone on the table, the frown creasing his smooth brow again. What the fuck was this?

By the time Santino and his guest arrived. William was calm, dressed impeccably as Santino had asked, in grey cashmere and black silk. Their guest was dressed expensively, but more casually, having met Santino après-ski, and his response to William's cool nod upon his entrance was to brazenly eye the younger man up and down. It was all William could do not to roll his eyes.

Santino made no move, watching his lover and the man size one another up. The man broke the silence."This is a great place you have here. A little out of the way, isn't it?"

William dragged his eyes from Santino's face, flustered by the blazing heat that bloomed suddenly in the vampire's eyes. "We like our privacy." William managed to say. "Would you like a drink?"

The guest turned to look at Santino and then back at William. "I'd prefer to get on with the business at hand." William, who was not entirely sure just what the business at hand was, shrugged.

"I don't mean to sound crass." The man continued, stepping close to William, "I'm not much of a drinker and you are every bit as attractive as your friend suggested you were."

William thought it strange that the man did not seem to notice Santino's exceptional allure but then, it might be that Santino was affording some help in that situation. The vampire had gone to sit in one of the comfortable chairs by the fireplace and William met his eyes once again. The fire he'd seen there moments before was hidden again and Santino only smiled faintly. William shrugged and turned into the man's embrace.

 

****

### Santino

 

I watched them, William and this mortal…Ron? Rick? Something of the sort. William did not ask nor did he volunteer his own name. He allowed the man to caress him, though he turned his head from the man's kiss, distracting him instead with sinuous, teasing undulation. After a few minutes, William led the man down the hall to the bedroom, glancing back at me as they left. I nodded once.

I willed the lights off, preferring the ambiance of the fire to the harsh glow of electricity.  
Listening to the sounds of their coupling, the rich scent of their sweat and their blood, charged with adrenaline and endorphins and pheromones swirling invisibly around me, I felt another spike of thirst.

Six hundred and some years and still the hunger is there, every night without fail. There are those who tell me after the weight of several centuries the need abates but I have not found this to be my truth. Perhaps it is a matter of personality, for even in my mortal life as a priest I found ascetism elusive and ultimately unattainable. In those days I feared damnation as much as I feared the one who had opened my senses to carnality.

He comes to mind often of late, my Maker. I believe it is because I have taken a mortal lover for myself, much as he had taken me. William is nothing like the man that I was, being of this time. He lives with no fear of what may await him, no belief in heaven or hell or anything beyond his immediate senses and their gratification.

Mortals living in this place, in this century, can have no conception of what it was like, how it was to live with death all around you, the smell of decay and sickness and fear a palpable, choking miasma. So many died, yet I lived. I live still and all because this creature, this vampire, was curious about the life I led. In those dark, plague-ridden days, I would wait for him to come to me in my austere cell, at once fearful and exultant, my sinful flesh quivering at the mere thought of his touch. He awakened something in me that had lain slumbering for the forty-one years I had lived. I waited in ecstatic fear for the damnation that surely awaited me for allowing my flesh to be corrupted with his burning kisses and his intimate invasion of my body and my senses.

When William surrenders himself to me I feel in him the echo of the mortal that I once was, for there is in him the same lustful anticipation, the same fearful ecstasy. There are other resonances, too, tonalities which my Maker would not have heard from my own roiling thoughts when he would come to me in the night. William has none of the guilt I carried and he makes no secret of the fact that he covets the immortality that I withhold from him. His greed is child-like; he wants things that he cannot understand; it is the fascination of a baby gazing at the wavering, pretty flames flickering on his birthday candles.

William worked his body in the other room, drawing gasps and moans from the man I had brought back with me. He does this because I want him to, but my reasons are not what he believes them to be. It was not voyeurism that prompted me to bring the man here. I draw no satisfaction from the acts they perform; it does not stir me. William can and does afford me pleasure when we couple and the pleasure is distinctly sexual. My flesh feels hard against his soft, human skin, but I am not made of stone, for stones most assuredly do not feel the thirst that is steadily rising within me. Had I thought that this man might live through the night? Perhaps I had when I brought him here. The thirst has changed all that.

I rose from the chair and moved silently to the room they occupied, standing by the door to listen a moment more. When I entered the room, William raised his head to look at me and started back. The man beneath him muttered something unintelligible, his hands reaching to pull William back down.

"Santino?" William said.

  
****

### Narrative

****  


When Santino returned, William was seated in the chair by the fireplace, pale and trembling. He was dressed, and his hair was damp from a hasty shower. He flinched back from Santino's hand, but relaxed when the vampire's fingers kneaded his shoulder gently.

"Why did you do that?" William asked him after a while.

"I do _that_ every night, _caro_." Santino said softly. "Come with me."

William resisted. "I don't want to go in there." he muttered. He raised his head to look into Santino's dark eyes. "Please."

"The other room, then." Santino said, pulling William inexorably up.

William stood still while Santino undressed him. "Was that supposed to be some sort of reality check?" William demanded suddenly.

"If you like." Santino answered in a mild tone as he shed his own clothing. Santino smiled at him and got into the bed. He sat with his back against the headboard and patted the tops of his outstretched thighs. William licked his lips and went to him.

"You see now that I cannot satisfy certain appetites with you?" Santino said as William straddled his lap. William's breath hitched when Santino's arms encircled him and he laid his head against the vampire's broad chest. "That is reality, William." Santino pulled William closer, nuzzling the tender place beneath his ear and inhaling his scent. He had a nearly overwhelming urge to sink his fangs into the vulnerable throat, to bathe in William's blood. He pushed the urge aside and licked William's ear with his rough tongue.

"You are anxious." Santino murmured. "I smell it." He rolled his hips slightly and smiled into William's neck. "Still, it does not hinder your arousal." William was hard and he moaned when the vampire rasped his tongue down his throat again. "Why is that?" Santino slid his hands down and cupped William's taut buttocks. William trembled, waiting. And Santino lifted him and slid his hips down somewhat. He held William suspended above him. "William? Why is that?"

The vampire felt William flex, attempting to impale himself. "Why is what?" William panted. His eyes shone with lust and Santino knew he had forgotten what the question referred to.

"You are anxious, yet you wish me to fuck you once again and you still open and loose from his attentions. You are aroused by his fate?"

"Are you crazy?" William said. "No. It's you. Don't you get that?"

He tried to pull away, but Santino held him easily in place, laughter rumbling in his deep chest. William struggled again and Santino released him and laughed even more delightedly at William's attempt to appear offended.

"You are a poor actor, _caro_. It isn't my august self that keeps you roused to such a point and I know it was not the unfortunate end of our friend this evening."

"That's crass even for you." William said in a low, resentful tone. He rose from the bed and shrugged into his robe with a protracted shiver. Santino chuckled again.

"A simple truth. But I will not argue with you. You are cold. Come back to bed and I will warm you."

William stood in the center of the room, staring at Santino. He would go to the bed, of course and he wondered when it was that he'd decided he would place his life in this creature's hands. He thought fleetingly again of Lestat, golden Lestat who seemed so very nearly human. Had there been a chance? He'd thought so for a moment and then there had been Lestat's delightedly amused laughter. Later he had seen Louis watching him with a reptilian stare that had no inkling of anything human in it at all.

"William?"

He started, his eyes snapping to Santino. So beautiful, he thought. So powerful. William went to the bed and was enveloped by arms so strong there was no thought of resistance. Gentle kisses on his brow, his eyes. Their mouths met and he forgot the dead man and Lestat and his misgivings. When Santino broke the kiss and sank his fangs delicately into his neck, William cried out, his hands grasping at the vampire's powerful shoulders in a mindlessly panicked way, as though he thought the world might finally fly from him and not be returned.

 

  
**~~~~~**  


 

Dawn came and William slept deeply. Outside, the snow came own fitfully for a while until it was banished by a wintery sun. William slept on; he had not moved at all since Santino had propped the pillows around him and then left to sleep the day away in the dark basement of the chalet. If anyone had walked in they would likely have thought William dead at first to judge the deathly pallor and waxy appearance of his skin. Upon closer inspection his shallow breathing might have been detected. No one came to mark these details however, and William came to a soupy semi-awareness in the late afternoon.

At first he thought he'd come down with a nasty flu bug; his limbs were leaden, his pulse was thready and far too fast and his body ached. When he turned his head to look at the clock, pain radiated from his neck and he winced, raising his hand slowly to see if his glands were swollen. Instead of smooth skin his fingers encountered torn flesh, dried blood, and the events of the night before flared in his memory.

_"…you are cold. Come back to bed and I will warm you."_

And so he had gone, unable to resist Santino's beautiful eyes, his alabaster skin, supple yet so very hard. He went and Santino pierced his tender flesh and drank and drank and drank. William weakened; he languished in the arms of the vampire, certain that he was dying, even when Santino released him.

"You will not die, my William." Santino told him. William was incapable of speech. Santino held him close, stroking his newly paled brow, pressing kisses to the sluggishly bleeding wounds on his throat. "You will not die." Santino' lips were red with William's blood.

William didn't remember much after that, only that Santino had moved him gently to the center of the bed, solicitously propping him up on pillows so that he might find it easier to breathe Santino kissed him once more before removing himself to whatever part of the house he had chosen to spend the daylight hours in.

Thirst.

After the pain, the worst thing was the maddening thirst he felt. He tried to sit up but succeeded only in sliding down from the nest of pillows. His groaned, hands scrabbling helplessly at one of them. He shoved it aside at the last and his glance fell again on the night table. There was a decanter there, cut crystal. It was filled with something cool for it blushed droplets of condensation; the room was very warm. After several determined tries he managed to sit up, his head swimming. It took several more minutes for the dizziness to pass and he reached for the decanter. Heavy…oh, it was heavy, but he managed to grasp the neck and drag it to where he sat, swaying as though caught in a breeze. The moisture on the bottle soothed his burning skin. He did not notice the dimness of the room, he thought only of opening the decanter and drinking the contents.

He could smell it when he removed the cut class stopper…wine, something fine, straw-pale and above all, wet. He groaned again, this time eagerly. He brought the bottle to his dry lips and tilted it up.

The wine spilled into his mouth and out of it, streaming out of either side of his lips; he did not notice. He noticed only the blessed coolness of the wine in his throat, the burn as it hit his clenched stomach.

 

****

### Santino

 

How strong he was, pretty William. I'd left him weak and gasping and here he was, only a half a day later, sitting up and drinking the wine I'd left out for him. I smelled fever in him; I smelled fear and anger. His mind, raced along, fueled by all these things. Images from him telegraphed themselves to me and though most of them made little sense, disjointed as they were, I did catch a determined undercurrent from him; nascent plans to leave, to get away.

Interesting.

Even more interesting was his careful expression when I entered the room, replaced very quickly with the acquiescent expression I had grown used to seeing. I did not make it a habit to intrude upon his thoughts, though there were those times when they came through to me whether I looked for them or not. When there is intimate contact between us it is hardly avoidable and up until this moment there had never been a hint of William wishing to free himself from our involvement.

As if he could.

I sat down on the bed and took the decanter from him, holding it to his lips and watching his throat work as he drank thirstily. I remember with startling clarity a time when my maker had left me in just such a condition and the painful thirst I'd had upon waking. It was nothing at all compared to the thirst awakened when he finally brought me to him.

He made a frustrated little sound when I took the decanter away and he watched it, his gaze bright with fever.

"You have become disenchanted with me, William?"

"Give me the wine. I'm thirsty." he said.

"I know. I remember how it felt. Does your neck give you pain?"

"You're going to kill me, aren't you." he said flatly.

"No, indeed. Why should I wish to do that? Your imagined transgressions with others? Come now. I have told you such ideas of dalliance do not move me either way."

Why are you doing this then? What do you want?"

"I want to know what it is you think you want. A simple, honest answer for a change."

He let himself go limp, settling back into the pillows. He skin was so pale, the delicate tracery of vessels beneath so prominently blue. The wound at his neck was an enticing, exotic flower; I longed to sip from him. He was too weak, I knew it, but that weakness, that was also beguiling. Placing the bottle on the night table, I got into the bed beside him and gathered him close. His skin was hot, a burn against my own cool skin.

"Tell me what you want, William." I crooned, smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead.

His contrary nature warred with his need to answer. In the end his need was greater.

"I want to taste you. I want to drink from you. I want you to make me what you are." he said, struggling against me as I licked at the wound on his throat. "But you know all that, don't you."

"I wanted to hear you say it." I said.

 

****

Fin


End file.
